Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘With Iris, he will master himself better. There are days when he feels a sapping of control, when he thinks that his love is a madness, that Iris does not love him, not really. But an emotion this strong can only be reciprocated. He must wait silent, quiet, hidden, until she is ready to come to him.’

Listening to the audiobook version, which I can’t find on here.

‘Richard’s brother, Edward IV, is the tallest king ever to have ruled England or Great Britain. At 6’4”, he was an inch taller than his grandson Henry VIII and no king before or after has matched his height. Prince William, at 6’3” will come close, but Edward’s record looks set to remain in place for a while.’

‘She is polite. She is unfailingly polite, and now he knows that she barely remembers him, it occurs to him that she may not want to come at all, that she may just agree to spare his feelings. And what then? A thought passes across his brain, as clear as glass. Well, then, the voice says, you must kill her. He almost laughs at himself - how ludicrous of him.’

Silas is really reminding me of the main character from The Collector, he is obsessed with a girl he doesn’t even really know, having conversations with her in his head etc.

‘In 1989 the Historic Royal Palaces Agency (HRPA) was formed in response to a government inquiry into a devastating fire at Hampton Court Palace three years earlier. This called for a more streamlined and effective management system for Hampton Court, the public side of Kensington Palace, the Tower of London, Kew Palace and the Banqueting House at Whitehall.’

‘She shakes her head, counting the grubby coins on to the pillow. She bites them. He counts too. Six pence. She’ll make at least five times that when the night’s over. She’ll be busy what with her influenza, Albie knows: she’s passed it off as consumption and put her rates up by a penny. Dying girls are the most treasured of them all.’

‘The State Apartments had been open to the public for two years by the time Princess Beatrice took up residence. Prince Albert had once expressed anxiety that his ‘poor children would be turned into the streets’ if the palace became too much of a visitor attraction, but his fears proved unfounded. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the State Apartments and private royal residences coexisted harmoniously’

‘the King faced growing criticism about the fact that he had abandoned Kensington as a royal palace, this making the cost of its upkeep no longer justifiable. However, although he did not wish to live there himself, George had no desire to see it demolished. He therefore decided that the palace should be refurbished to provide accommodation for the junior members of the royal family.’

‘She is destined to eke out this pitiful life, to suffer the slaps and insults of Mrs Salter, to endure her sister’s jealousy, until, at last, some scrawny boy fattens her with child after child, and she spends her days winching laundry through a mangle, swilling rotten offal into Sunday pies, all while tending to infants mewling with scarlatina and influenza and goodness knows what else, until she contracts it too’

‘There is a stench of stomach acid. Iris is sure Mrs Salter’s illness is caused not eased by her nightly battery of pills: ‘Mother’s Friend’ for her gastric aches, ‘Dr Munro’s Harmless Arsenic Complexion Wafers’ to conceal her pimples. Iris tires of scrubbing the vomit-stiffened rug, her hands stinging with vinegar.’

‘Kent’s most ambitious project at Kensington was the King’s Gallery, which he began in 1725. He replaced most of Wren’s interior with his own design, which included painting the woodwork in white and gold, with red damask covering the walls. This made the gallery one of the first examples in England of the white, gold and red formula that would remain fashionable for the rest of the eighteenth century.’

‘By the time of her accession, Anne had been pregnant no fewer than seventeen times. Only five children had been born alive, all of whom had died in infancy or childhood. Anne’s son William, Duke of Gloucester, had been her greatest hope, and had been greatly adored by his uncle and aunt, William and Mary, who were themselves childless.’

‘Above all, it had to be executed quickly and economically. Wren’s response was typically pragmatic. Rather than demolishing the existing house, he used it as the centrepiece of the new palace, adding a rectangular block or ‘pavilion’ at each corner. This decision would affect the subsequent history and configuration of the palace to the present day.’

‘Basically, even though Hannah admits that the decision to take her life was entirely her own, it’s also important to be aware of how we treat others. Even though someone appears to shrug off a sideways comment or to not be affected by a rumour, it’s impossible to know everything else going on in that person’s life, and how we might be adding to his/her pain.’

The main character reminds me of Arya Stark, although I am not quite sure how well a girl openly dressing as a boy would have gone down in Tudor times.

‘Zuccaro’s blanched, mask-life face pattern was thereafter inserted on portraits of every size throughout the 1580s and early 1590s. The first of the so-called ‘sieve portraits’ adopted the Darnley face. No other face pattern of the Queen was to be so widely disseminated and this is testament to the government’s ability to control the royal image during this period.’

In case anyone wonders why I am reading a lot of Philippa Gregory lately, I have not gone mad (I know many of my friends don’t like her work and I’ve always been on the fence). I am obsessed with these new audiobook versions, the narrations just make everything come to life, and so I am using it as an excuse to finally listen to some of the ones I haven’t read yet, which tend to be the ones on Elizabeth I.

I love Alex Kingston as Bess of Hardwick, but I still can’t get River from Doctor Who out of my head.

‘She can speak three languages but she can tell the truth in none of them. She can dance like an Italian but she cannot walk a straight line. She can embroider better than a sempstress and write a fair hand, but her seal on the bottom of a document means nothing... This queen could swear on a fragment of the True Cross - and it would still be provisional.’

‘Then one of the girls, her name doesn’t matter here, said what everyone else was thinking. “It’s like whoever wrote this note just wants attention. If they were serious, they would have told us who they were.”
God. There was no way for Hannah to open up in that class.’

Sad that some believe that and hope something like this would be taken seriously in schools now, although from my past experiences I doubt it.

‘Elizabeth proved resistant and Sir Christopher Hatton and her councillors tried to convince her that her tooth needed to come out. Finally the aged John Aylmer, Bishop of London, offered that one of his few remaining teeth might be extracted to reassure the Queen and encourage her to submit to a similar procedure.’

‘There had been rumours of a flirtation between Lettice and Dudley ten years before, when Lettice had come to court heavily pregnant with her son Robert. Then it seemed that Dudley was acting out of jealousy of the Queen’s relationship with Sir Thomas Heneage, and he stopped courting Lettice as soon as Elizabeth displayed hurt and anger at his betrayal. Now it seemed Dudley had renewed his suit.’

‘Since the earliest days of her life, when Blanche rocked the princess’s cradle, Elizabeth and her devoted Welshwoman had a close bond which evolved and deepened as Elizabeth grew up. They shared a love of books and horses, and until Blanche grew too old and blind, they would often ride out together.’

Is it odd that for a moment there I actually believed the Northern Rising could win? They should have, by all accounts at least, and then Mary Queen of Scots will have been on the English throne. How different things would have been.

‘Well, what did you want to hear? Because I’ve heard so many stories that I don’t know which one is the most popular. But I do know which is the least popular. The truth. Now, the truth is the one you won’t forget.’

The fact that River from Doctor Who is narrating this is part of the reason I decided to give it a go. Plus I am trying to read books about Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, as I have studied Elizabeth in depth this past year for my special subject module at university.

Before I start this, I know this is a controversial one. I know many of my friends on here don’t like it and that is fine. However, I will admit to having watched and liked the show, but I think that is because Hannah felt real and the thoughts she had I have had in the past too.

‘It was perhaps her need to deny her own scarring that led her to regard with hostility other people’s pockmarked faces. Rather than show compassion to Mary Sidney, the woman who had nursed her through her illness and been so badly scarred as a result, Elizabeth regarded her with disdain. Later the queen would also make very clear her distaste for a marriage with the Duke of Alençon, another smallpox sufferer’